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Gur: 
Unfinished Task 


in Burma 


By 
RAYMOND P. CURRIER 
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x American 
Baptist Foreign Mission Society 
Ford Building, Boston,- Mass. 


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Our Unfinished Task 


‘in. Burma 


BY RAYMOND P. CURRIER 


bi-plane hangs over the Gulf of Martaban, 

100 miles south of Rangoon; and the coast 
line of Burma twists before and about you like the 
right side of a script capital G. Pegu is near the 
upper right hand point, from which the Tenasserim 
coast, long and slender, reaches far to your rear. 
Ahead of you the wide Irrawaddy delta, rounding 
from east to west, almost in a semi-circle, forms the 
nearly horizontal curve of the G, ending on the west 
near Bassein. The west. coast is the right hand line 
of the loop; but the rest — the left side of the loop 
and the little projecting stroke of the G — are lost 
in the Bay of Bengal. 

In the distance ahead, stretching off north, you 
can with your best field glass just make out the six — 
long parallel sections which make up the province, — _ 
three yomas (that is, literally, ‘main bones”) and 
three river valleys. On the west, from near Bassein, 
begins the Arakan yoma which extends north 400 
miles into the Chin Hills that broaden out till they 
lose themselves in Assam on the northwest and 
China on the northeast. Just east of this section 

1 


Or you see it — this old Pagoda Land? Your 


and flanking it all the way to China, isthe Irrawaddy 
valley. Then comes the Pegu yoma, mere play- 
mountains compared with those of the north and 
less than 300 miles long, and alongside them on the 
right is the Sittang river and valley. Next — the 
fifth section — lies the great eastern yoma, a huge 
bone indeed. From far south in Tenasserim it runs, — 
at first narrow, then an enormous mountain-wall, — 
reaching breadthwise into Siam and China on the ~ 
east, and in the north joining the headwaters of the — 
Irrawaddy and the spreading flank of the western — 
yomas. The last of the parallel sections is the Sal- 
ween river, sometimes splitting this eastern wall 
lengthwise and sometimes lying, as indeed does much 
of the yoma itself, in shadowy territory cutee a 
British jurisdiction. cee 
Now look again from your vantage point 100 niles 
south of Rangoon. If you float slowly up over the — 
delta, with your eyes open for Christian work, you na 
will say ‘Ah ha! just as I thought. These Burma — 
missionaries have made a deal of noise over nothing. _ 
Undermanned! Why, here in a space not 200 miles 
square are fourteen Baptist stations, not to mention ae (a 
Methodist, Anglican and Catholic. Beside China, ae 
this is crowded.” x 
Hold on. Here’s the very reason I’m weihe t 
article. Just let me have a seat in you ‘plane for 
few hours and we'll see. Because Burma has be 
worked for 100 years and can show fourteen statio 


in 40,000 square miles, is it therefore ‘‘ crowded with 
missionaries? ”’ 

Suppose we start from Rangoon up the main 
railroad line in the fourth of those parallel sections. 
In the first political division, about the size of Maine, 
we shall find a million and a half Burman Buddhists. 
With all allowance for what is being done by native 
evangelists and the Burman Christian church one 
can not blame a missionary of this region for feeling 
that the Burmans are unevangelized, when he 
realizes that he is one of only four missionaries for 
the million and a half. And in the whole province 
there are still 7,400,000 Burmans reached just as 
imperfectly. 

But if you think the Burmans are the only prob- 
lem in the country, you must use that field glass more 
carefully yet. In those crowded towns and villages 
along the railroad and the river, you can find in large 
numbers, besides the Burmans, three entirely differ- 
ent races. You can have forty Burmese-speaking 
missionaries in that division instead of four and yet 
leave these three races absolutely untouched. 

First there are the Karens, 850,000 of them and 
not over 100,000 are Christians. Then there are the 
Chinese, in all the province some 120,000; two 
regular Methodist workers for them in Rangoon; 
some Baptist work sustained by the Rangoon City 
Mission Society; as much effort as possible through 
the imperfect channel of the Burmese language by 

3 


our own “ shepherds of the 7, 000, 000”: some 
olic work; but that is all. And, most neglected of 
there are the Indian immigrants. Yes, the A 
and Catholic churches are bathe for. them; ‘3 


These four races, scattered everywhere ia rh ae 
big towns and remote villages alike, are in a <7 
not unevangelized. But it is plain that the me | 
presence of four Burmese mission stations 
40,000 square miles, even if they were adequat 
the Burmese work, could have nothing whatever t 
do with the evangelizing of this remaining niillio 
and a half of the population. : 

But this is only the beginning. The big nGthe 
lies in the hills, whither we shall now fly, — 10 cere 
miles north, up the Sittang valley. Turn the ‘plan Selo 
off to the right here at Toungoo and, striking out 
over the first ridge of the eastern yomas, go as far 
the Salween River —the last of the six para 
sections. You will have to fly high, for you m 
clear a 5000 foot peak. The distance across is} 
much over fifty miles, as we fly, but below, you” 
see the way the missionary goes: motor road — 
twenty-five miles, then bad cart roads, and fi 
the most tortuous mountain foot-paths, aie ) 
and down gorge, a journey of days. <a 

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_ Near the river at last you come to the Red Karens, 
— 19,000 of them, with a dialect all their own, 
spirit-worshipers in more than one sense of the 
word. They live crudely, stupidly, continuously 
drunken, at the starvation point. What little crops 
their rough mountains will yield they spend on 
gambling and lust. They are reached by white 
missionaries only a few times in a year and by Karen 
preachers only intermittently. To both they have 
proved peculiarly resistant — the responsive quali- 
ties of the Karen race as a whole apparently sodden 
over unrecognizably. A student in my class, who 
was the first Red Karen to enter college and was 
here only because his grandparents left the Red 
Karen hills and their moral atmosphere, said to me: 

“Tt is not possible to convert the Red Karens. I 
know one of them who attended the theological semi- 
nary and then went back as a missionary, but the 


_ old life caught him and he has fallen back to be one 


of them.” It is true, as he went on to say, that the 
Catholics have made some converts among them, 
but these drink as much as before, and pay hardly 
any attention to Sunday or even to church-going. 

Now speed up your engines and sail due north for 
about fifty miles. We are in the Shan States, piles 
upon piles of almost impassable mountains, where 
a missionary tour of any distance is a matter of 
weeks. The Shans, of course, are the chief people,— 
660,000 in this tract alone. . There are five sta- 


o 


tions to supply this need, two of them unmanned. 3 
But this territory has been a catch-basin foreach __ 
of the successive tribal migrations that have swept 


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down from central Asia in the past centuries. Con- __ ; 


sequently, besides the Shans, there are in the 


northern and southern Shan States fully 500,000 = 
members of other tribes, representing four entirely — a 
separate ethnological groups and scores of separate 


dialects. The needs of these we have attempted to 


supply by two Shan-speaking missionaries and by _ : 
missionaries at three other stations. Of these 
stations one is vacant and one is heroically held 


alone by the widow of Dr. Truman Johnson. That 


is, we are trying to evangelize this region, — é q 
bigger than Illinois, having a million and ahalf 


people and as many languages as a seaport city, — 


with three working mission stations. Do you wonder 
that I call Burma still unevangelized? 


But let us look at a few of these unevangelized — 


even untouched — peoples in detail. 
(1) Northwest of Loikaw, the station ‘ ‘manned ” 


by Mrs. Johnson, live the Goungdos —a tribe of 
Karen spirit-worshipers. Physically they are wild 


enough, but they are, in their own odd way, punc- 


tiliously moral. Unlike their neighbors, the Red ~ 
Karens, they neither make nor drink liquor; they 


have the reputation of being strictly honest even in 


trading and it is certain that before brought under 
British rule they were accustomed to shoot a thief 


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on the spot. The same punishment they dealt out 


' to an offender against marriage customs. 


Here is an entire tribe, — their numbers unknown 
but large, who would make a signal addition to 
Christ’s Kingdom. In Him their stern morality 
would find gentler fulfillment and their unhewn 
barbarity become nobility and efficiency. A man in 
Loikaw could reach these people, but there is no man. 

(2) About halfway between Loikaw and Taung- 
gyi, which is 60 bi-plane miles away, you will find a 
small lake. On its shores are 50,000 Inthas, that is— 


“sons of the lake.” ‘They are in many ways a 


splendid lot, of good physique and kindly nature; 
rather well-to-do; hospitable and eager to read, 
even their monks asking for tracts, and all listening 
attentively. But they are wholly unlike the Karen 
tribes to the south. Racially they are Burman 
hybrids of some sort and speak a hybrid Burmese, | 
Religiously they are Buddhists. The missionaries 
in Loikaw and Taunggyi—the one a Karen, the 
other a Shan station— can only pass by these 


people as they go about their own work, and even in 


passing can get only an indirect and imperfect 
language communication. But there is no male 
missionary at either of these stations. 

(3) Close to Taunggyi itself — indeed, all along 
the valley of the river and lake up which we have 
just passed — are 120,000 Toungthus. That means 
literally, mountain fellows. They are a Karen tribe, 

7 


who were apparently left here and in the movtiitanelll 
of Tenasserim when the more progressive Karens oa mes 
pressed down to the plains; but they, too, have their — ‘<a 
own dialect which cuts them off from our present 
missionaries. A man with a motor. boat could meet 
hundreds of Toungthu boats at the weekly bazars __ 
all up and down the river. But there is no man and. , ve 
no boat. te 

(4) Passing Taunggyi now to the north and west; 
you will find the Danus. They, like the Inthas, are 
a Burman hybrid people, speaking’ a Burmese ~ 
patois and found scattered over a wide region. 
They number 70,000 and 55,000 are within easy 
reach of Taunggyi and are reported as open and 
friendly. But this station is “manned” by a woman Den 
who cannot travel among them. 

Let us now take a longer flight. Through the 
northern group of Shan States, past our empty ~— 
station of Hsipaw, with the famous Ruby Mines 
lying to the west, we come into the Kachin Hills, 
where three of the long parallel sections adjoin, the _ 
western and eastern mountains and the Irrawaddy. 
Straight ahead on the river is Bhamo; to the eastis 
Namkham; and north of Bhamo, nearly 300 miles 
as the plane goes and farther by rail, is Myitkyina. 
Beyond Myitkyina again, northern and eastern — ey 
mountain-stretches, hundreds of miles long, seem Appa e 
reach endlessly into the unexplored north and the — 
almost as little known Chinese border. And even 

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west of the river there is a straight 200 miles before. 
one comes to the wild frontier hills of Assam. These 
three, Bhamo, Namkham and Myitkyina are the only 
stations of any mission in this tract in which are 
found more than 160,000 Kachins. But the words 
of the single woman who is holding the Myitkyina 


field during the absence on furlough of the male 


missionary, show the challenge of the field. 

“Our Kachin work here includes the Maru, Atsi 
and Lisu as well as the various dialects of Kachin. 
These are distinct languages and the people have, also, 
their own customs and characteristics. We have an 
evangelist, Ba Thaw, for the Lisu, the Burma Bap- 


_ tist Missionary Convention paying part of his 
salary. But as for the others, though a number have 


been reached through the Kachin work and we have 
a number of their Christians in our Kachin villages 
and several children in this school, nothing is being 
done for them as separate peoples. Concerning the 
numbers of these races the census report is inaccu- 
rate, as it does not include the recently annexed strip 
of more than 200 miles, the inhabitants of which are 
mostly Marus and Atsis. Ours is the only mission at 
work in this whole district. These people are all 
animists; their ignorance is absolute and their 


_ immorality unbelievable. But they are energetic 


and sturdy and friendly. The work for the Marus 

and Atsis should be undertaken separately from the 

Kachin work. They offer an immense and practi- 
9 


cally untouched field. If evangelists under the — 
direction of the missionary of this station could — 
undertake this distinctive work, I believe large — 


numbers would soon enter the Kingdom. It 
is Our opportunity, as no other Society is in 


contact with them and our workers already have 
their confidence, which means everything in — 
reaching such people. The only obstacle is the lack — 


of workers.” 


It is time we were turning back. Already you 
must see that Burma is not evangelized. Yet we ~ 
have three more important tracts to visit on our © 


return. Flying southwest from Myitkyina we shall 
come, after a flight of about 500 miles, to the Chin 
Hills. Massed in the northern hills and far south- 
ward through Arakan and the western Irrawaddy 
valley are 300,000 Chins. In the Irrawaddy valley 
and in Arakan, Catholics and Anglicans are at work, 
and we Baptists have in each of these districts one 
station. Yet our missionary in the Irrawaddy valley 
reports that in his 200 mile field, after five years of 
service, there are still some Christian Chins on the 
edge of the yoma whom he has never seen; and on 
the hills themselves he believes there are some 
among whom no work is being done, unless by the 


Catholics. But the most serious condition is in the 
Chin Hills themselves. Here are two stations, Haka — 
and Tiddim. The latter is vacant. Haka is in charge 


of the widow of the missionary who established the 


lies Gnd ae tal SM i NS ee nt 


station. Her account ably describes the field:— 

“Who? The Northern Chins. 

“Where? Northwest from Pokokku, (on the Irra- 
waddy River) to the Manipur border and northern 
Arakan. 

“Of what character? Most primitive, wild and 
uncivilized. 

“How many? According to the last census, 
119,556, in the portion of the Chin Hills adminis- 
tered from Falam. ‘The only mission work done 
among these people is done by our Society. The 
Pokokku Hill Tracts contain 28,251 Chins among 


_ whom, so far as I know, no work is being done by 


any denomination; certainly there is no missionary. 
The northern Arakan Hill Tracts have a Chin 
population of 22,234 with no missionary of any 
denomination. The unadministered territory has a 
population of, it is believed by officials, at least 
30,000; though no proper census has ever been 
taken. There has never been a missionary of any 


denomination among them. 


_ “What obstacles? Lack of consecrated ab a Se 
both white and native. 
“What prospects? So far as I know there is in the 


3 ea fiture-no prospect of any new missionaries for 
____ these almost two hundred thousand people.” 


As we go on, we ought to take a glimpse, at least, 
- of Arakan. We shall find that Chins are not by any 


4 = _means the only, not even the principal people here. 


11 


The Arakanese are a Burman hybrid people, well 
developed, strongly Buddhist, understanding Bur- 
mese but speaking a very puzzling dialect. Hence, 
though accessible from our Arakan Chin station, 
they can be reached only in a limited way by our 
one missionary there, whose chief work is among the 
Chins. Yet there are 250,000 of them and the only 
mission work among them is being done by the 
Catholics. 

And how about Tenasserim? We have already 
noted that there are Toungthus there in large num- 
bers. A run above the Tenasserim range, before we . 
put to sea, will show us another people, the Talains, 
who belong to a different ethnological group from 
any we have seen yet. Had we looked sharp in the 
Shan States, we could have differentiated 170,000 of — 
their general group among the many mixed tribes 
there; but most of them live here, close to the border 
of Siam whence they originally came. It is true that f 
they are assimilating rapidly with the Burmese and — my 
that some day there may be no need of separate — : 
Talain work. But at present there is only one man _— 
for the 320,000 and he returned in 1917 from an en- — x 
forced furlough of two years. ao 

To sum up: It is true that in Burma the eeu a. od 
has been preached for 100 years — that is, to the E 
Burmese race. It is also true that in one secon ae a, 7 
and possibly in others, as many as fourteen mission — a 
stations can be found within 40,000 Bi he): miles. Ye 

12 2 te ike oe 


But these facts do not make Burma ‘“‘evangelized,”’ 
for two reasons: — | | 
(1) Because this section and all others on the 
plains, as well as some in the hills, are crowded not 
only with Burmans, but with Karens and: Chinese 
and Indian immigrants. This mixture of char- 
acteristically and linguistically separated races splits 
the work of the fourteen and other similar stations 
at least in two, and usually leaves the Chinese and 


a Indians very little touched, except by Catholics. 


(2) Because the mountainous districts on three 


' sides of Burma as well as the plains near the moun- 
__ tains are filled with scores of distinct tribes. Some 


of these belong to general ethnological groups that 
have not been connected since they left their original 


3 homes in Central Asia centuries ago. All of them 
-_-vary so greatly in dialect and customs that they re- 


quire separate workers. These tribes, especially 
those mentioned above — the Red Karens, Goung- 
dos and Toungthus, the Inthas and Danus, the 


a4  Lisus, Atsis and Marus, and the Chins of the un- 
_ administered territory —are practically or wholly 


oe _ unaffected by any Christian workers. 


Basaanaa=ess 


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71 3M—5-1-1917 x an 


OR additional literature 

or other information re-— 

garding the work of the 
American Baptist Foreign 
Mission Society, write to any 
of the following: 


1. The nearest District Secretary. 
2. Department of Missionary Ed- ~ 
ucation, 23 East 26th aEEOt, 
New York City. 


3. Literature Department, Box 41, 
Boston, Mass. 


5 ae 


